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The Romantic Piano Concerto series reaches Volume 61, and continues to probe into the obscurest depths of the nineteenth-century piano world. Döhler’s Piano Concerto in A major and Dreyschock’s Salut à Vienne are both first recordings. The two composer-pianists were contemporaries, both child prodigies and both hugely admired in their day. Today their names are not even faintly familiar to concert-goers.

Döhler’s Concerto is pure entertainment: a lavishly ornamented virtuoso confection that requires a high-wire act from the soloist from start to finish. Dreyschock’s Morceau de concert, Op 27, is dedicated to the Philharmonic Society of London. It opens with a Beethovenian declamation—and indeed throughout the piece there are allusions to several Beethoven works, notably the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata. Salut à Vienne is a lighthearted but highly effective showpiece.

These all-but-forgotten works live again through the stylish artistry and technical brilliance of Howard Shelley, who is both soloist and conductor of his long-term collaborators, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

Reviews

'These works offer a fascinating backdrop to the greatest masterpieces of the age. And you couldn't imagine a finer advocate than Howard Shelley, who is not only palpably committed to the cause (enthusing the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in the process) but who has both the dexterity and the musicality to make the best possible case for this music. Mention should be made, too, of the entertaining and informative notes by Jeremy Nicholas' (Gramophone)

'Played like this with virtuoso panache and total conviction, these pieces sound like neglected masterworks' (BBC Music Magazine)

'Howard Shelley, joyously familiar to collectors of this series, negotiates the coruscating arabesques, trills, repeated notes, thirds and what not with great aplomb, synchronising the orchestral accompaniment with remarkable skill even in rubato places where you'd think both hands were more full … the album is well worth the money for these works alone … Shelley is brilliant, as ever … adventurous newcomers should hop aboard, instantly. Another Hyperion triumph' (International Record Review)

'Shelley's limpid touch, clarity of fingerwork and limitless musicality make the effort sound as if it’s the proverbial piece of cake. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra rises to the challenge with verve and charm' (Sinfini.com)

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Introduction

Should the name of Alexander Dreyschock make an unlikely appearance in your life, the chances are it will be accompanied by the anecdote that has come to define his entire career: by assiduous practice he was able to play the left hand of Chopin’s ‘Revolutionary’ Study in octaves. For better or worse, that is what Dreyschock is remembered for today. (This recording marks his second appearance in Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series: his Piano Concerto in D minor, Op 137, can be heard on Volume 21.) But Theodor Döhler (or Doehler, as he often appears)? No. There we draw a blank.

The few reference books that dignify Döhler’s name with an entry seem all too keen to be as brief as possible before passing on to Dohnányi, Donizetti and other bigger fish. Here, for instance, is Waldo Seldon Pratt in the excellent New Encyclopaedia of Music and Musicians (1924): ‘Döhler, Theodor (Naples, 1814–1856, Florence). German-Italian pianist, pupil of Benedict, Czerny and Sechter, from 1831 pianist to the Duke of Lucca, but with many tours throughout Europe and long sojourns in Russia and France, and from 1848 living in Florence. He was a showy salon-player. Wrote the opera Tancreda, 1830 (Florence) and numerous graceful but superficial piano works.’ That, by and large, says it all.

Other encyclopaedias add little beyond telling us that Döhler’s father was a Kapellmeister in Naples and that he was a child prodigy, making his public debut at thirteen. (Julius Benedict, incidentally, who gave Theodor his first lessons and who himself had studied with Hummel and Weber, was only twenty-one when he arrived in Naples in 1825 as music director of the San Carlo theatre. His two piano concertos are on Volume 48 of this series.) Döhler moved to Lucca in 1827 when his father was appointed to the court there, and then studied in Vienna from 1829 to 1834. In 1846 he was ennobled by the Duke of Lucca. Thus elevated to the rank of baron, he was then able to marry the Countess Elise Sheremeteff, a Russian princess. The couple spent two years in Moscow before moving back to Italy. The last nine years of Döhler’s life were marred by illness: he is said to have died from ‘a disease of the spinal marrow’.

So what are we to make of Theodor Döhler and his place in the pantheon? The incomparable Heinrich Heine had no doubt, and drolly included him in his characterizations of the leading players of the day when he described ‘Thalberg [as] a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Mme Pleyel a sibyl, and Döhler a pianist’. Writing in April 1841 he tells his readers, tongue-in-cheek, that ‘the pianist had enchanted all hearts at his recent Marseille concert, especially because of his interesting pallor, the result of a recent vanquished illness’. He then expands: ‘Some say [Döhler] is among the last of the second-class pianists, others that he is the first among the third-class pianists. As a matter of fact he plays prettily, nicely, and neatly. His performance is most charming, revealing an astonishing finger-fluency, but neither power nor spirit. Graceful weakness, elegant impotence, interesting pallor.’

If Döhler the pianist sat below the salt, as a composer he was beyond the pale in the eyes of Edward Dannreuther writing in the first edition of Grove’s Dictionary. His fantasias, variations and transcriptions are variously ‘bedizened with cheap embroidery’ and ‘sentimental eau sucrée’, while his études are ‘reprehensible from an artistic point of view, and lacking even that quaintness or eccentricity which might ultimately claim a nook in some collection of musical bric-à-brac … His works, if works they can be called, reach as far as opus 75.’

No judgment is passed on Döhler’s Opus 7. It is doubtful that Dannreuther knew of it. He might have revised his opinion. It may not be a masterpiece on the same level as Hummel’s A minor or Chopin’s E minor concertos, but for a period-piece of scintillating prestidigitation it has few rivals, graced, moreover, with many passages of charming lyrical invention. It is, in short, an entertaining work for the audience and a high-wire act for the soloist. You must look elsewhere for nobility or profound musical thought, but the success or failure of the concerto form does not rely solely on these elements, despite Schumann’s lofty claim to the contrary (‘… already in the middle I began, while playing one page, to cast hopeful looks towards the next, for the composer displeased me more and more; and at last I was forced to confess that he has no idea of the real worth of art’).

Döhler’s Concerto, composed in 1836, has an imposing dedication to ‘Sa Majesté La Reine de Naples, Marie Isabelle de Bourbon, Infante d’Espagne, Mére [sic] du Roi Ferdinand II du Royaume des Deux Siciles’. The opening of the concerto is equally imposing (Maestoso, tutti, fortissimo), presenting the two contrasted main subjects in conventional style. The soloist takes them up with enthusiasm, unleashing over the next six minutes a virtually non-stop fusillade of rapid runs in thirds, sixths and contrary motion, with some huge leaps along the way. Trills piled on trills (Hummel would have been proud!) lead inevitably back to the main subject followed by a change of key to C major and a Chopinesque third subject. At 8'31'' Döhler takes another turn, modulating briefly to C sharp minor for his next idea in jabbering semiquavers. Brilliant triplet scale passages return the music to the tonic and an attenuated recapitulation of the two main subjects. After a repeat of some of the vigorously decorated material from earlier, the movement storms to a conclusion.

The short slow movement (Adagio) in F major also begins fortissimo and tutti, but here the soloist enters after a few bars with another theme reminiscent of Chopin, before filigree runs quickly increase in intensity leading, unusually, to a cadenza (Presto). This segues into the jaunty 2/4 rondo finale (Allegretto). Döhler’s second subject is a suave cavatina that soon breaks into his now familiar passages of breathtaking triplet runs, repeated notes and other keyboard athletics. A third subject appears at 2'22''. The tutti which finally gives the soloist a few moments respite is not the rondo theme but a newcomer. When the rondo theme finally reappears at 4'45'' it is succeeded by a fourth theme (Più lento and cantabile) in D major. Yet another idea is introduced at 6'54'', nominally in D minor and marked Vivo e brillante. The final pages make extreme demands on the soloist’s dexterity and precision.

In May 1839, the Revue et gazette musicale announced the imminent arrival of Alexander Dreyschock as a new star in the pianistic constellation, assuring the Parisian public that ‘as far as mechanism and prodigious digital facility are concerned, he is the most astonishing player and that when he arrives in Paris he will prove a dangerous rival for Liszt, Thalberg and Döhler’.

Heine was again on hand to deliver his verdict on this phenomenon when Dreyschock finally made his debut at the Érard rooms in Paris early in 1843. ‘He makes a hell of a racket [höllischen Spektakel]. One does not seem to hear one pianist Dreyschock but three-score [drei Schock] of pianists. Since on the evening of his concert the wind was blowing south by west, perhaps you heard the tremendous sounds in Augsburg. At such a distance their effect must be agreeable. Here, however, in this Department of the Seine, one may easily burst an eardrum when the piano-pounder thumps away. Go hang yourself, Franz Liszt! You are but an ordinary wind god [Windgötze] in comparison with this God of Thunder!’

Whatever his shortcomings as a musician, Dreyschock the pianist amazed audiences with his extraordinary technique, dazzling one reviewer into talking of a new trinity of pianists ‘of which Liszt is the father, Thalberg the son, and Dreyschock the holy ghost’. Many believed he was unequalled in digital dexterity with his arsenal of octaves, sixths and thirds, while the renowned critic Eduard Hanslick thought Dreyschock ‘completed the succession of those virtuosi whose bravura was capable of attracting and fascinating a numerous public which admired technical magic and was happiest in astonishment’.

Dreyschock was born in Záky (sometimes given as Zack or Zachotin), then in Bohemia and now in the Czech Republic, on 15 October 1818. Like Döhler he was a child prodigy and was playing in public from the age of eight. At fifteen, he took off to Prague to study with the renowned pedagogue Václav Tomášek (his father had died young and his somewhat simple-minded mother apparently thought he had gone there to study medicine). In December 1838 Dreyschock embarked on his first professional tour, spending the best part of the next two decades startling audiences all over Europe.

The greatest sensation was caused by his various pieces for the left hand alone of which the most famous was his Grande Variation sur l’air: God Save the Queen (written sometime before 1854 and published by André in 1862). If music tells us something about its creator, then just a glance at this piece reveals that if Dreyschock played it up to tempo he must have had a staggeringly good left hand. Pieces for one hand were novelties, and would have contributed towards public enthusiasm towards Dreyschock; indeed to hear the fearsome left hand of Chopin’s Op 10 No 12 played in octaves and at tempo would produce astonished gasps in any age. ‘The man has no left hand’, raved the elderly Cramer; ‘they are both right hands’. For six weeks, Dreyschock worked twelve hours a day to master the task.

But Dreyschock must have had more to offer than mere acrobatics and stunts. Why else would Anton Rubinstein have appointed him in 1862 to the prestigious post of professor of piano at the newly opened Conservatory of Music in St Petersburg? Sadly the Russian climate did not agree with Dreyschock’s delicate health and after six years he retired to Italy. He died of tuberculosis in Venice on 1 April 1869, aged fifty.

Dreyschock’s Morceau de concert, Op 27, is dedicated to the Philharmonic Society of London. It opens with a Beethovenian declamation—and indeed throughout the piece there are allusions to several Beethoven works, notably the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata. A number of ideas are presented in quick succession before the piano’s fiery entry leads to its own treatment of these themes, including an enchanting section (from 2'55'') where the melody is presented by the left hand decorated with leggiero sixths and repeated notes in the right hand. A dolorous new subject in F minor is introduced by the solo cello (shades of Berlioz’s orchestration of Weber’s Invitation to the Dance) which eventually gives way to several exacting pages (marked con fuoco) and a return to the opening theme, now in F minor. The French horn, rather than the cello, announces the repeat of the lachrymose theme, still underpinned by the cello but now in the work’s tonic. There is no doubting the home key as we come in sight of the finishing post.

Dreyschock’s Salut à Vienne: Rondo brillant, Op 32, was published as a piano solo, for piano and string quintet, and as a work for piano and orchestra. Unable to track down the full score and parts, Howard Shelley has opted for the version with strings only, but played by the full orchestral section (the loss of the clarinet and timpani, for which there are cues in the solo piano score, is partially offset by the inclusion of the triangle—predating its use in Liszt’s E flat major Concerto). It’s an effective little showpiece in two sections, with Dreyschock’s predilection for octaves much in evidence, especially in the coda. This is a light-hearted romp, no more or less, and best appreciated as such.